Scientia Pro Publica 23: Physics

I really didn't know that nuclear power plants are just fancy steam engines. Arun Sinha explains How Nuclear Power Works:

The U-235 is placed in a container in a nuclear reactor, where it absorbs neutrons. On being hit by a free neutron, the uranium atom splits into two smaller atoms (typically krypton and barium) and releases two to three neutrons and a huge amount of energy as heat. This event is known as fission.

Materials· a transparent plastic lid of a container for CD or DVD· a torch· a screen (a piece of rigid paper, a wall, …)· water· a thick brown sheet of paperProcedure1. Construct, with thick brown paper, a cone with a small hole in the top 2 mm high and with the base slightly larger than the opening of the torch.2. Place the paper cone on the torch.3. Fill the lids of water (you can also add a little white tempera).4. Point the torch on the outer edge of the lid.

Pleiotropy comes from the Greek πλείων pleion, meaning "more", and τρέπειν trepein, meaning "to turn, to convert". It designates the occurrence of a single gene affecting multiple traits, and is a hugely important concept in evolutionary biology.

I'm a postdoc at UC Santa Barbara.

All Many aspects of evolution interest me, but my research focus is currently on microbial evolution, adaptive radiation, speciation, fitness landscapes, epistasis, and the influence of genetic architecture on adaptation and speciation.